100+ social networks offer billions of people a growing ability to consume and produce news. Unfortunately, intentionally and verifiably false information (referred herein as “fake news”) misleads readers, and these falsehoods that spread through social media “take root quickly and die hard.” A person skilled in the art would appreciate the different types of fake news including disinformation, misinformation, fabricated hoaxes, satire, B.S. news, etc. Thought different in meaning, these terms are generally referred to herein as “fake news” for ease of description. This purported “news” impacts public confidence, public health and well-being, personal and organizational reputations, the markets and democracy.
Each day for example Facebook and Twitter publish hundreds of millions of new story link updates and tweets, including too many lies to imagine. If a lie in a story is picked up without critical context by multiple clickbait sites, dozens of other blogs, cross-posted over thousands of social media accounts and read by hundreds of thousands, then it becomes fake news. It does not help that algorithms sometimes favor sensational content over substance.
Fighting fake news is a race against time, similar to stopping a fire in its tracks before it spreads as wildfire and causes irreversible damage. Social networks and society are increasingly challenged by the difficulty of rapid detection and diffusion of disinformation, despite investments in machine learning, information literacy, third-party flagging, fact-checking programs, and news feed updates.
Fact checking is an intellectually demanding process that often requires hours and sometimes days to complete. In the case of disinformation impacting a company, the public relations firm Edelman reports “it takes an average of 21 hours before companies are able to issue meaningful external communications to defend themselves.” Layers of organizational approvals lead to turnaround times too slow to work and the optimal prevention window is often missed. During that time, more damage is done in early reposts by many users, creating periods of confusion and uncertainty.
In addition, some extremists and hostile foreign governments are applying social engineering concepts to manipulate social media platform algorithms to further their agenda, potentially endangering brand perceptions reputations of long established companies, products, as well as the personal brand image of any person in the public eye.
Disinformation is not new. In the 1990s, Russian agents planted a story that the US had created the AIDS virus in a lab. However, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it” is more relevant now than ever before. Rumors spread much faster due to the effect of social media operating as an echo chamber as more people became active communicators rather than passive receivers. The problem is compounded by the “4 Vs of news”: growing Volume (from a few newspapers to billions of sources), Variety (e.g., Tweet, Instagram post, WhatsApp message, deepfake, etc.), and Virality (images, videos, or links that spread rapidly through a population by being frequently shared with a number of individuals)—decreasing their Veracity.
A 2018 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey about perceived accuracy and bias in the news media shows that Americans believe that 64% of the news and information they see on social media is inaccurate. Edelman's 2019 Trust Barometer reported that 73% of the people surveyed are worried that fake news is being used as a weapon.
Fake news proliferation is an adversarial attack on our information ecosystem and a new breed of cybersecurity threat. It is partly a function of information overload and the failure to have sufficient filtering tools. To date, techniques to conveniently address information overload have been found to be impractical. Also, previous attempts at filtering at scale and other approaches have fallen short. The frustrations are often centered on solutions that are “too little, too late,” similar to trying to clean up the internet by building a firewall or attempting to purify the entire Ganges river when pervasive pollution, or vitriol, is in the air and the public's cognitive infrastructure is under siege.
Improved filtering techniques and alternative methods are needed to promptly contain the threats and help slow or halt the spread of potentially damaging fake news in a high-stakes information war. These efforts remain a critical and urgent need in the art.